After weeks of inactivity for the United States' case against persons involved with BetonSports.com, the former online operator, the government today revealed the reason for the delays: The court simply forgot about the case.
Riley Kizmo, a spokesman for the court, explained this morning in a brief statement to the media that the case was accidentally left off the docket.
"It was an honest mistake," Mr. Kizmo explained. "The clerk misplaced some papers, and the appropriate documents for putting the case on the docket were never filed. Since then, it has been 'out of sight, out of mind.'"
In an exclusive interview with IGN, Mr. Kizmo elaborated on the error and why it took so long to realize what had happened.
"The clerk in charge of filing these papers actually mailed the folder to his mother," he said. "She's a scrap-booker, and he sends her material every so often -- pictures, newspaper clippings, that sort of stuff. The BetonSports folder got mixed up with those materials, and he shipped them off to her."
The mistake was discovered on Easter Sunday when the clerk was thumbing through his mother's scrapbooks and came upon several pages of BetonSports "nostalgia." Realizing what had happened, he repossessed the documents and properly filed them the following Tuesday.
"She dressed them (the court papers) up kind of nice, actually," Mr. Kizmo said with a bit of a chuckle. "She added some lace around the border and the cover page was cut in the shape of a heart. And they kind of smelled like lavender. Why she included them in her scrapbook, we'll never know. My guess is that because her son had sent them to her, she just assumed they were important and of great significance."
In any event, the case is back on the docket, but rules and procedures mandate that failing to file the papers on time automatically put the case at the back of the line. The next hearing, therefore, will not be until at least spring 2010.
Mr. Kizmo said that in his 27 years working for the federal court, he's only seen this happen once before.
"Believe it or not," he said, "we had a case 'lost' for seven years. The defendant, who was out on bail, passed away, and we received a copy of the obit from his attorney, with a note that said, 'Case closed.'"
Editor's Note: This article is a pathetic attempt at an April Fools gag. None of it is true or real. Sorry.